There is a passage in He Jin's HHS biography that I'd like to have translated. Can anyone assist? It's this passage:

大將軍司馬許涼、假司馬伍宕說進曰：「太公六韜有天子將兵事，可以威厭四方。」進以為然，入言之於帝。

I can't get further then this and I doubt it's correct:

General-in-Chief Sima Xuliang (or "the General-in-Chief's Major Xu Liang"?) and Major Wu Dang said to [He] Jin: "[according to] Taigong's Six Secret Teachings the emperor should take control of the army and everything will be fine. [He] Jin was pleased with this advice and told the emperor.

I'm not sure about the names of these people, because neither are in Rafe's tome.

"In the third year [of Huangchu], he was made King of Qiao. In the fifth year ... Qiao county"

Can someone help me with this? Im having some difficulties with finding the right English words for 改封. I guess it means something like "change of an administrative unit".

This might be more complicated than it looks.

譙縣 (Qiao County) had been an administrative district through the Han, and had originally belonged to 沛 Pei. Han had this weird thing where some of the mid-sized districts below the level of province were called commanderies (郡), but when they were assigned as a prince's fief they were known as states (國). Pei was originally a state but by the late Han it was no longer a fief, so it went back to being Pei Commandery. Anyway, some time either during the Jian'an years or when Cao Pi ascended the throne, a new commandery, Qiao, was created, and Qiao County was the seat of administration.

So when Cao Lin was first made Prince of Qiao, he presumably had the whole commandery as his fief, with a bunch of counties under it (I've seen 15 and 5; cf. http://www.e3ol.com/library/html/2008-1 ... 1932.shtml). However, it seems like Cao Pi decided to reduce basically everyone's fiefs to just counties/cities at some point. So, poor Cao Lin went from being the Prince of Qiao (State/Commandery) to Prince of Qiao County. This is what this line is about.

And no I don't know the English for this either. Probably "stingy-assholery".

"Whatever you do, don't fall off the bridge! It'll be a pain to try to get back up again." - Private, DW 8

DragonAtma wrote:Aha! Does that also explain why some (commanderies) had an administrator and others (states) had a chancellor?

And I presume the occasional prince (such as Liu Chong) would actually run his state instead of being a figurehead who had a chancellor handling everything.

The Liu kings/princes lost all their political power in the mid-Western Han, but the Han court maintained the fiction that these were vassal states and not just ordinary administrative units. So mimicing the imperial government, the head of the state administration was called a chancellor, and there were a number of other officials not found in regular commanderies, but all of these were appointed by the central court, and the king was really just a rentier with no influence over the administration of his notional land.

Liu Chong it seems owed his unique position from the troops he raiesd in response to the troubles of the times. Arguably he was acting just like a member of the gentry class, like Cao Cao, just one with a more posh pedigree

譙縣 (Qiao County) had been an administrative district through the Han, and had originally belonged to 沛 Pei. Han had this weird thing where some of the mid-sized districts below the level of province were called commanderies (郡), but when they were assigned as a prince's fief they were known as states (國). Pei was originally a state but by the late Han it was no longer a fief, so it went back to being Pei Commandery. Anyway, some time either during the Jian'an years or when Cao Pi ascended the throne, a new commandery, Qiao, was created, and Qiao County was the seat of administration.

So when Cao Lin was first made Prince of Qiao, he presumably had the whole commandery as his fief, with a bunch of counties under it (I've seen 15 and 5; cf. http://www.e3ol.com/library/html/2008-1 ... 1932.shtml). However, it seems like Cao Pi decided to reduce basically everyone's fiefs to just counties/cities at some point. So, poor Cao Lin went from being the Prince of Qiao (State/Commandery) to Prince of Qiao County. This is what this line is about.

And no I don't know the English for this either. Probably "stingy-assholery".

Thanks, now it all makes sense I think I'd rather go with "changed his fief" rather than stingy assholery though

Fornadan wrote:"In the 3rd Year, he became King of Qiao. In the 5th Year, [the Emperor, the court] changed the fief to Qiao county"